Rise of the Rune Lords

Demolition

On evicting squatters, condemning a building and claiming an ownerless hoard.

22

APR/12

Pinnacle of Avarice

Sunday the 20th of Gozran 4708 AR

As his companions made their way through the Pinnacle’s now vacant halls, the disembodied spryte searched the tower’s remaining souls. Upon isolating that of one of the dozen Denizens of Leng still remaining, he used his changeling glamour to possess its body so as to gain further insight into their nature and the mysterious device they were working on. As best as he could figure, the Denizens were in the process of calibrating it so as to focus it on a moment in time when the Thassilonian empire was at its height some one hundred centuries earlier. The purpose of this task continued to elude Denizen-Aubrey however until his companions opened the door to speak with the other eleven inscrutable creatures. An odd stilted parlay ensued.

When questioned, the Denizens readily revealed that they were scholars and researchers of a sort, vying to link their machine to the distant past so as to directly study that era for no other purpose but to sate their curiosity. The Denizens went on to explain that, through the device, they could directly observe the tower’s residents in the distant past but could not yet hear them. When pushed, they claimed to have no allegiance or even association with the Runelord or his forces. The Sihedron were initially befuddled by the inscrutable Denizen’s motives and alien reasoning. After some consideration however, the group decided that the risk of linking the present with a fallen, though dangerously powerful ancient empire was too great a risk and so implored the Denizens to give up their task willingly. Initially unmoved by the Sihedron’s reasoning, the Denizens were eventually forced to reconsider when told that the chosen locale for their experiment would soon be made uninhabitable.

Having reached a consensus amongst themselves, the Denizens finally relented. The alien beings proceeded to quickly and efficiently pack up their device; many of its parts magically folding, collapsing and stacking themselves throughout the process. A few moments later, the Denizens fell in line and one by one left the chamber via a magical portal that they’d opened; their folded up device dutifully following behind them on its own. Denizen-Aubrey vacated his host’s body just as he was stepping through the portal.

That done, the Sihedron briefly toured the Pinnacle’s chambers to collect a few odds and ends before leaping off the interior landing to safely descend the tower’s prodigious height thanks to the newly embodied spryte’s glamour. Outside the occlusion field they found a pile of some two score Sihedron rings; abandoned by the Pinnacle’s departed giant and lamia residents. Once outside the Sihedron’s architect-turned-adventurer, Kivu, carefully studied the thirty or so massive stone pillars which supported the tower’s full weight. Although a marvel of stone giant engineering, Kivu didn’t need Aubrey’s Second Sight to determine that the tower’s 2,200 hundred foot height was supported more by magic than mere stone. After a brief consultation, most of the Sihedron vacated the area as Ainsel withdrew a long metal tube from her magical wind sac and passed all of her magical items to Aubrey for safekeeping. Carrying the odd metal tube (and nothing else) to the base of the tower, the folletti opened it to reveal the erratically malfunctioning rod of magic cancellation the Sihedron has carefully collected and contained from the Runeforge’s Halls of Envy. A light jostle is all that was required for the rod to emit a pulse of queer energy which engulfed one of the massive stone pillars; instantly stripping it of its magical reinforcements. To its builders’ credit, the tower continued to stand until Ainsel had repeated the process on four of its adjoining pillars. With its four northernmost pillars crushed instantly to dust beneath the towers’ prodigious weight, the entire Pinnacle of Avarice first listed then came crashing down along Mhar Massif’s southern face as the folletti swiftly fled. And thus was brought down the planet’s highest reaching structure, the late Runelord of Greed’s seat of power and an enduring symbol of the Thassilonian empire’s might.

Once the dust had settled over the city below, the Sihedron regrouped and, with the Spryte’s glamour, magically traveled into the lair of the blue dragon he’d reconnoitered during his previous explorations of the city. The group found it abandoned by its owner; it most likely being the wyrm in Karzoug’s company which they’d slain earlier. With nothing to impeded them, the Sihedron claimed the dragon’s hoard for their own.